The day has finally arrived when we get new multiplayer maps for our favorite online shooter – Halo 2. There are two versions available – online and retail pack. The online version includes the five new maps for $11.99 via Xbox Live – Containment, Turf, Sanctuary and Warlock are currently available for free download. The retail pack on the other hand includes all 9 maps, all the auto-updates, a bonus cinematic and a behind-the-scenes documentary. The retail version will set you back $19.99 and should be available from your favorite retailer now. As cool as these new maps are, there is one major draw back – you can only play the new maps during custom games against people that also purchased the maps. Bungie states that these new maps should start rolling out into Rumble Preview and Team Preview on July 11th. At least this gives all a chance to download the maps and get used to them before getting our ass kicked

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One of Gear Live’s favorite audio manufacturers, Denon, has released their new S301 and S101 high end audio receivers. Both of them have the much requested feature of including a true iPod dock. You can plug your iPod into the system and control it fully though the remote control. Now like most Denon equipment, this blend of great audio and stunning functionality won’t come cheap - $999 for the ‘low end’ S-101 and the S-301 commands a $1599 price tag. The perfect solution for the bleeding edge early adopter.

When thinking about content, oftentimes people concentrate on the textual and visual parts of their website. One thing you must also keep in mind is the method you will use to allow your visitors to find it all. A search box is one of the best pieces of “content” that you can put on your site. It is a simple field that allows a reader to enter a search query, which then uses scripts to check an index of your sites content and displays any matching terms. This puts your visitor in control of their experience, and makes your site interactive. Nowadays, there is no excuse not to include one - just about every website package software includes built-in tools to implement one - and if you don’t like it, you can use the Google search box which is included in Google AdSense as well; it will even earn you money.

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Anyone who has played Halo 2 on Xbox Live has surely come across at least one cheater and knows how annoying they can be. Cheaters ruin the game play for everyone in general, not just in the game but overall all. How so? By way of auto updates. Every time some punk finds a “hack” for the game and starts ruining the experience for the rest of us, Bungie releases one of these famed auto updates. As you can imagine or experienced, this is highly annoying – so what’s Bungie’s stance on cheaters? Aside from banning every single cheater they see and rolling out updates, Bungie is also working with the Xbox Live Team to enforce the Code of Conduct and also track in-game feedback. This means that a simple banning from Halo 2 for that account is not the only thing in their arsenal of tools against cheaters. Currently more than 2,600 “gamers” have been banned by Bungie – which seems like a small number compared to the over half-million Halo 2 gamers today. The cheating seems to be bigger than ever and with the current new map released, we are sure to see this even more – good news is that Bungie will be releasing a new update in the second week of July, one week after the new maps being released. The good thing about this timing is that the new maps can only be played on Custom game types via Xbox Live – meaning the only cheaters you’ll see are the ones you know and are on your “friends” list.

Tablet PCs are the red-headed stepchildren of the portable computing world, and usually due to the price delta between notebooks and their tablet brethren, people are unwilling to make the compromises that Tablets require. One machine out there that requires a few less compromises than most is the Electrovaya Scribbler SC3000. A slate based on the Sonoma platform, the Scribbler is a product of Tatung rebranded for the Canadian battery technology specialist.

That’s where the SC3000 really shines ... with Electrovaya’s extended battery, they claim an amazing 9 hours of battery life, along with a fingerprint reader and other amenities in its 3.5 lb. frame. Can the Scribbler live up to the 9 hour battery life claim, and can it really suffice as a replacement for the standard notebook computer? We’ll let you know when we’ve had a chance to review the SC3000 for ourselves.

With WiMax getting a lot of press of late its interesting to see a major player in the bandwidth and telecommunications space join the fray. WiMax is a technology similar to WiFi, but is able to offer greater bandwidth at a distance of up to 40 miles. With companies like WalMart and Sprint getting behind it it makes people wonder - will 3G or 802.1x technologies win in the end?

So, a few days ago we told you about how iTunes wasn’t able to read our RSS feed for the Gear Live Podcast. Today I am happy to tell you that the situation has changed. You may now subscribe to the Gear Live Podcast through iTunes using this link. Now that we have that squared away, it is now just a matter of getting out RSS feed up to snuff with all the iTunes related tags. Crap. Nonetheless, go ahead and subscribe like mad.

A new blood test, called the Baby Gender Monitor, is being marketed to pregnant moms too eager to wait until 16 weeks into pregnancy. The test, which claims to be 99 percent accurate, retails for $275 at the Pregnancystore.com website. Users simply prick the edge of their finger, then submit a blood sample to a Massachusetts laboratory, who in turn analyzes the blood for traces of fetal DNA and indicates its gender. This relatively new test has stirred up quite a bit of controversy from those who believe some may use it for “gender selection”, but the CEO of Pregnancystore.com, Sherry Bonelli, says, “There’s no proof people are using it for gender selection. That’s not the intended purpose of the kit, and we really don’t see women using it for that purpose.”

A research group form the University of Alberta is reporting that a “steady diet of spam” can actually be good for you. Researchers split more than 2,100 Canadians into two groups, with half receiving a steady stream of emails promoting a healthy lifestyle, and the other receiving none at all. After 12 weeks, the subjects receiving the “spam” saw their mean body mass index (BMI) go down, meaning it improved, while the others saw their BMI grow. The results will be published in the July/August 2005 edition of the American Journal of Health Promotion. I don’t know about you, but most of the spam I get has nothing to do with a healthy lifestyle, but either way, I’d rather just not receive any spam period. Unless of course, those “IncREa.se Y0ur sEx DrYvE!!1!” ones would produce similar…never mind.

The speed at which your computer can become infected has now decreased. If you’re running on Windows without the proper protection, London-based security company Sophos says 12 minutes is all it takes. The company reports 7,944 new viruses in the first half of this year, that’s a 59-percent increase over the same time last year. IBM also reports that phishing incidents have increased 226 percent. IBM’s May Global Business Security Index attributes the increase in phishing attacks to the rise of zombie “botnets” being used to pump out massive volumes of the scam e-mail used in phishing attacks, as cyber-criminals attempt to increase their profits.